Here, you are urged and encouraged to run your mouths about something important.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Is this how Fast and Furious ends?

Hundreds of dead Mexicans; whistleblowers who put their necks on the line; Justice Department officials who committed perjury; evidence that Fast and Furious was authorized at the highest levels of DOJ; a President who asserts Executive Privilege to prevent the production of documents in response to a lawful subpoena; and an Attorney General found in criminal contempt of Congress. Yet, Congressional investigators appear to be content with letting five ATF leaders take the fall. "Miscarriage of Justice" doesn't begin to explain this.

WASHINGTON -- Republican congressional investigators have concluded that five senior ATF officials -- from the special agent-in-charge of the Phoenix field office to the top man in the bureau’s Washington headquarters -- are collectively responsible for the failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation that was “marred by missteps, poor judgments and inherently reckless strategy.”

The investigators, in a final report likely to be released later this week, also unearthed new evidence that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix initially sought to hide from the Mexican government the crucial information that two Fast and Furious firearms were recovered after the brother of a Mexican state attorney general was killed there.

According to a copy of the report obtained Monday by The Times, the investigators said their findings are “the best information available as of now” about the flawed gun operation that last month led to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. being found in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over subpoenaed documents.

Two more final reports, they said, will deal with “the devastating failure of supervision and leadership” at the Department of Justice and an “unprecedented obstruction of the [congressional] investigation by the highest levels of the Justice Department, including the attorney general himself.”

On one hand, Issa fought both the DOJ and Republican leadership valiantly. In the end, however, it was Republican leadership that carries the most disgrace. Nonetheless, this news amounts to an armistice on the part of Issa.

It's a sad day when not enough political will can be mustered to get to the bottom of a program that led to the death of at least one Border Agent (Brian Terry) and hundreds of Mexicans, all in the name of a gun control agenda.

We've come to expect the Democrats to close ranks and defend their own, no matter the cause; we've come to expect Republicans will cry and wilt when it's time to fight but this is the first time they've done so in the face of a potential mass murder conspiracy. If John Boehner is really worried about future generations, he has a strange way of showing it. Fast and Furious appears to be winding down without justice being served and much of that reality can be laid right at the feet of Boehner, who has turned his back on those who stuck out their necks and sacrificed their children: